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In last year's study, I found a .88 correlation between Wins Above Replacement and actual wins. This year is a slightly different story, but WAR still shows as a telling statistic.

WAR is a heavily debated statistic. There's controversy over which version of WAR is better -- BP, FanGraphs, or BR -- and there's debate about whether or not ERA, FIP, or xFIP should be used to calculate WAR for pitchers. The following study uses fWAR.

As much debate as there is, WAR is a fairly accurate predictor of a team's record even with the inconsistencies and flaws in some of the stats.

How does WAR take into consideration the contribution of the manager who has the ability to place the player in the position to succeed or fail, and how does WAR factor in a cohesive club house that motivates a player to play beyond his abilities? We saw both of those in Baltimore this season.

ofahn wrote:How does WAR take into consideration the contribution of the manager who has the ability to place the player in the position to succeed or fail, and how does WAR factor in a cohesive club house that motivates a player to play beyond his abilities? We saw both of those in Baltimore this season.

It doesn't. WAR can give you a good idea of the talent you'll need but it's not an exact predictor. You can see how much the Orioles outperformed their WAR. A lot of that is due to Buck.